Interesting ideas.
The giant reign is 6″ of travel though isn’t it? Which is definitely more than I need, kinda closer to a nomad than a blur if you know what I mean.
I can’t imagine a chumba VF2 is going to be much cheaper – is it?
I’ve seen the offers CRC have on the older 08 spider xvp frames, but I’m not sure they’ll take the longer fork? and I have a vague idea that the older version of vpp didn’t really let you use all of the travel. Also the sizing seems a bit odd, the large has a 24″ top tube but a 21″ seat tube, which seems very tall.
The whyte E5 geometry does seem like a bit of a mystery.
I wondered about the Commencal Super 4 myself, but no idea whether it would handle the longer fork and not sure how to find out…. still merlin has them pretty cheap which is a bonus.